The Embracer Group has been hoarding studios and IP for a while ♎now, slowly becoming one of the biggest conglomerates in gaming. Studios such as Crystal Dynamics, THQ Nordic, Saber Interactive, Gearbox Software, and Dark Horse Comics are all owned by the Swedish company, and all face layoffs or closure after the recent news ꦉthat a $2 billion deal went awry and Embracer must cut costs to improve its bottom line.
To really drive this home, Embracer owns the rights to iconic series like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Borderlands, Saints Row, Timesplitters, Hellboy, Metro, Catan, and maybe even Gex. Oh yeah, and it owns the entirety of gaming in Middle-earth, too. And while that includes the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:almighty flop that was Gollum, Embrac🐓er is doubling down on Tolkien’s universe as a key way to recoup 🐭its losses.
"We own Lord of the Rings, and we know we need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very different fashion and turning that into one of the biggeཧst gaming franchises in the world," said Embracer Group board member Matthew Karch in a recent (thanks for spotting that).
The wording is the opposite of what 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lord of the Rings fans want to hear. The Lord of the Rings texts are something to be revered, the games created from their words crafted with care and love, to reinterpret what JRR Tolkien penned in a fashion both befitting his work and enhancing it. I’m all for different interpretations of༺ the Lord of the Rings canon – I’m incredibly excited for the anime detailing the exploits of Helm Hammerhand for this exact reason – but they should be made with love, with the goal of telling new stories in this brilliant world, not exploiting it for profit.
Many people place their own worldviews onto Tolkien’s work, despite the author himself so often decrying such ♈allegory. The Lord of the Rings is not a Catholic parable, but it was influenced by the author’s Catholicism. It’s not a meditation on war, but it takes a lot from Tolkien’s time in the trenches and, most notably, his experiences at the Battle of the Somme. The one thing that Tolkien admitted The Lord of the Rings was a commentary on is the rapid industrialisation, commercialisation, and capitalisation of England. Oh, and the Ents were based on his old friendship group of Oxford professors, but that one’s more of an in-joke than anything else.
The culmination of The Lord of the Rings books sees Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to the Shire, the beautiful land of lush green fields and quaint people that they embarked on this epic quest to save. Except, it’s ruined. Saruman, under the guise of Sharkey, has built huge, brick factories to harvest the ಞLongbottom Leaf grown there and fuel his addiction. The traditional farming of Sam and his dad Gaffer has been replaced by industry, belching smoke to the skies and practically enslaving the Hobbit population.
Toꦡlkien frames this as the biggest sin of the series. It’s a tiny slice of what Sauron wanted for the whole of Middle-earth, it’s what Saruman tried to achieve at Isengard before the Ents fought back, and it sent the beautiful Shire into ruination. Saruman’s greed, his lust for power and wealth, is the twist at the end of the book, just when you think the Hobbits are going to live happily eve👍r after. And this very greed, this exploitation of Tolkien’s vast literary resources are what Embracer plans to do with his legacy.
Were you a fan of Helm Hammerhand becoming a Ringwraith in Shadow of War? What about♒ the idea of Gollum as a prisoner who spends more time herding Orc-cattle than fighting with his own mind? Or Moria being used as the setting for a mobile city builder likely riddled with microtransactions? Because you’re sure as hell about to see a bunch more cheap cash-ins as Embracer tries to claw back any profit from its o♏wn failures, bastardising Tolkien’s work in the process.
Embracer has admitted it wants to “exploit” The Lord of the Rings in order to make up for its own failures as a business. It tried to hoard studios and IP to turn as big a profit as possible, an༒d it all went wrong when it couldn’t execute its business plan as intended. No studios should have to close because of corporate mismanagement at this lev♔el, and no piece of art should be exploited for profit like this.
The worst thing of all, though, is tha🃏t Tolkien warned us about this nearly 70 years ago. Nobody listened, and now good people are out of jobs because of greed. We don’t have Ents or Hobbits to save us in the real world, but we need to tell Embracer (and other companies consolidating dozens of studios under their roofs) that this is not okay and we won’t stand for it. Use our buying power as consumers and, in my case my power as a critic, to tell companies that this will not stand. After all, there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.